Design for Startups w/ Freshbooks, Oscar, and Stash

Design is fundamental to any business with a customer - which is most of them by our last count . Depending on the startup, design can be a key differentiator, a source of competitive advantage, the underpinning of all marketing, the experience that a customer or client has on your site, or the IRL experience with a product or service. "Design is how it works."

The titans like Atlassian, Facebook, Google, and Amazon, prioritize design. So they hire worldclass designers and even acquire design agencies.

Those aren't luxuries most early stage startups can afford. So how should an early-stage entrepreneur think about design during the early days? Where should it be on the priority list? What design principles, tips and even hacks can help entrepreneurs produce excellent and even sustainable early versions of brand, product, experience and marketing?

Important design principles- Form vs. function when it comes to designing- How to create a design strategy- Design thinking and user experience- Useful tools and resources- Brand development- Different kinds of design- How to interview designers- And much more!

About the panelists- Jeremy Bailey is the Creative Director of Product, and Head of Experience at FreshBooks, and sometimes self-proclaimed “Famous New Media Artist” at large. At FreshBooks, the world's #1 accounting software in the world for employed professionals, he leads a team of talented designers and engineers working to create a more inclusive and easier experience for their customers. He recently led this team through a complete rebuild of the FreshBooks product in a unique process where he actually launched a competing company and built a new product from scratch.

- Erin Galarza is the Product Design Director at Oscar. Erin leads the Design team at Oscar overseeing our member app, concierge and internal tools. Prior to working at Oscar, she was the Director of Product Design at Percolate, a content marketing platform. She holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Rutgers University.

- Evan Brock is the Creative Director of Stash, an investment platform founded in 2015 wither over 2.4 million users. He's also the Design Director of Carrot, a VICE company. Evan has worked at several different places including Complex, Fueled By Ramen, Atlantic Records, CMJ, The Syndicate, and Music For America. He studied marketing and design at Quinnipiac University.